Sometimes, I just need something quick and easy. Last night, I wasn’t in much of a mood to cook anything too complicated, and I had a limited number of ingredients on hand. So I used my knowledge of low-carb cooking, took inventory of what I had in the fridge and the pantry, and came up with the following. Spoilers: it’s DELICIOUS!

Ingredients:

Two to three boneless chicken breasts, cut into 1″ cubes

One large onion, sliced into strips

One bell pepper, sliced into strips

1/3 stick butter

1/3 cup heavy cream

1 large or 2 small cloves garlic – minced (or one TBSP garlic powder)

Salt & pepper to taste

Olive oil for sauteing

Directions:

Brown chicken in skillet with olive oil. Chicken should no longer be pink inside, but do not overcook.

Remove chicken from pan, and saute onion and bell pepper in pan until tender.

Remove onion and peppers from pan, and add butter and cream. Reduce heat to medium-low. Simmer, while using spatula to de-glaze pan.

Add garlic, salt and pepper, and whisk until mixed, and sauce thickens a bit.

Add chicken, onions and peppers back to pan, and stir until all ingredients are covered with sauce.

One of the main things I miss being on a low-carb diet is those delectable southern-style casseroles with their spongy, soft, warm Bisquick crusts. Well, I no longer miss those, thanks to the crust recipe I recently discovered. This crust is ridiculously easy to make, and is spongy, soft and warm – just like the Bisquick crust, but extremely low carb, Keto friendly, and completely gluten-free!

My favorite application (and the favorite of my boys, as well!) is the Taco Bake. Here’s a quick pic to get your taste buds excited. Check under the pic for the full recipe and directions, and then the nutritional info under the recipe.

Beat the cream cheese and eggs until smooth with a mixer or hand whisk. Add the heavy cream and seasonings of choice. Grease a 9 x 13″ baking dish well, and spread the shredded cheddar cheese over the bottom. Pour the batter over the cheese, making sure to cover as evenly as possible. Bake at 375º for 25-30 minutes. Let cool for a few minutes before adding the topping.

Brown the hamburger; drain the fat. Stir in the seasoning, tomato sauce, tomato paste and chiles or jalapenos. Spread hot mixture over the crust. Top with the cheese. Reduce the oven to 350º and bake another 20 minutes or until hot and bubbly. Serve with the toppings of your choice (may add additional carbs).

If you’re in a hurry, but still want a crowd-pleasing, savory, well-rounded and filling dinner, then look no further! These Cheesy Bacon Ranch Chicken Packets have it all in one package – meat, veggie, dairy. And of course, they’re low carb, and Keto-friendly.

To create these pouches of happiness, begin with pieces of aluminum foil that are around 16″ long. Then, you just build the recipe as follows (add salt and pepper to taste on top of the chicken breast):

Once you have all your ingredients layered, just close up the foil in a little air-tight pouch by folding in the ends as such:

Then bake at 375 degrees F for 40-45 minutes (depending on the size of your chicken breast) and tada! Let the pouches sit for about 5 minutes before opening them, and be careful – the steam will be HOT!

Here’s the text recipe if you’d like to print it out:

Cheesy Chicken Bacon Ranch Packets

(Each packet serves 1)

1 – Chicken Breast – raw

1 cup broccoli florettes

1/4 cup cheddar cheese

2 slices bacon – cooked

1/8 onion – sliced in rings

2 TBSP ranch dressing

Salt & Pepper to taste

Begin with a piece of alumin foil around 16″ long. Place raw broccoli in center of aluminum foil sheet. Place raw chicken breast on top of broccoli and add salt & pepper. Place onion slices on top of chicken breast, and then layer on bacon slices. Top with cheddar cheese, and then drizzle with ranch dressing. Close aluminum foil around ingredients to form a pouch, making sure not to compress foil down to touch ingredients. Bake for 40-45 minutes at 375 degrees F. Let pouches stand for 5 minutes after removing from oven, and open CAREFULLY – steam will be hot!

Who doesn’t love queso dip, poured over a big hot plate of beefy nachos? Everyone! But unfortunately, we don’t really care for all those carbs! Luckily, I have come up with a very tasty alternative that I think is just as good, if not slightly better, than the original. Next time, I’m going to try it with shredded chicken. Other meat substitutions are chorizo, or shredded pork.

Low-Carb Beef Nacho Soup

1 pound ground beef

2 cans beef broth (or five cups water and 4 beef bullion cubes)

8oz. Cream cheese, softened

8oz. cheddar cheese, shredded

1/2 cup heavy cream

1 medium onion, finely diced

1 small can mild green chiles

1 TBSP chili powder

1 tsp cumin powder

2 tsp garlic powder

Salt to taste

Brown ground beef, drain, and add to soup pot. Add beef broth (or recostituted beef bullion with five cups water) to beef in soup pot, and turn on heat to medium. Saute onion in skillet until translucent, add to soup mixture. Add softened cream cheese to soup mixture and whisk until incorporated (until any traces of white are gone). Add remainder of ingredients and simmer for 15-20 minutes.

Ok, first of all, don’t judge me for my Instagram pic. I’m new to photographing food, and trust me, it looks better with the filter!

One of my favorite hors d’oeuvres is sausage balls. Yummy, warm little nuggets of happiness filled with sausage, cheese and… Bisquick? Um, no. Not exactly low carb, right? Luckily, I came up with an alternative, and boy, have they been popular around this house!

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix all ingredients well, until everything is incorporated. Hand roll 1″ balls (or use a mellon baller!) of mixture and place balls on well greased cookie sheet, leaving at least 1″ between each ball. Bake for 15-20 minutes until cheese begins to melt out of balls. You can also broil the balls for a couple of minutes to brown them on top!

And here’s my take on it. This page was created using Basic Grey Serenade papers and embellishments. I also used my Tim Holtz Tiny Attacher to staple down the twine I used around the photo. If you like this layout, please be sure to Pin it to Pinterest – just “mouse over” the image and a Pin button will appear!

Thanks to Stuck On U Sketches for this challenge. This is definitely one of my favorite pages of 2013. Check out their blog for more fun sketches and challenges to help get your creativity flowing!

And here’s the page I created using this sketch. The photo is of me and my cousin way back in the 80s. I loved this photo, regardless of it’s bad quality, so I decided to document it anyway, with this fun and funky layout! This page was created using a variety of Studio Calico papers, and American Crafts embellies.

I loved the wild, freestyle nature of this sketch, so I followed it fairly closely, except I substituted a 4×6 photo instead of two smaller photos. This layout was created using Studio Calico’s Blue Note scrapbooking kit. If you like these pages, please be sure to pin them to Pinterest. Just mouse over the image for a handy “pin” button!

Hi everyone! The New Year is quickly approaching, and one of my goals for the year is to be more active in my craft room, and to actually CREATE lots of the stuff I have pinned. I went to a 13-hour crop yesterday, and completed 11 scrapbook pages – and they are all for challenges on my favorite challenge and sketch web sites. Needless to say, I have a ton of new page layouts to share with you this week, so let’s get started!

And here’s my take on the sketch. I don’t care for round photos, so I opted for square photos with rounded corners. I stuck to the basic idea of the sketch, with a few ideas of my own. Don’t forget – you can just “mouse over” the images on my blog to easily pin them to Pinterest!

Be sure to visit the ScrapFriends web site for tons of cool monthly challenges and inspiration!

Hi everyone! Today, I’m starting something new that will continue on the first Saturday of each month, here on my blog. I call it Sketchy Saturday (mainly because that’s what it is, and I’m not feeling anything more clever at the moment, LOL!). How it works is that I will create a page layout, and then “reverse engineer” that page into a sketch. So in other words, the page comes first, and then I create the sketch from that page.

So here’s the page I created. This is my adorable daughter and her boyfriend. I snapped the pic while we were eating dinner together one night, and thought it was the cutest pic ever. Isn’t new love the best?

Feel free to use this sketch to create with. Share it on Facebook, Pin it to Pinterest, or even Instagram it if you want. I’d LOVE to see what everyone creates with this sketch, so make sure to link me or hashtag #paperpotion when you post your creations!